While the rise of populism in Western Europe over the past
three decades has received a great deal of attention in the academic and
popular literature, less attention has been paid to the rise of its opposite—
anti-populism. This short article examines the discursive and stylistic dimensions
of the construction and maintenance of the populism/anti-populism
divide in Western Europe, paying particular attention to how anti-populists
seek to discredit populist leaders, parties and followers. It argues that this
divide is increasingly antagonistic, with both sides of the divide putting forward
extremely different conceptions of how democracy should operate
in the Western European political landscape: one radical and popular, the
other liberal. It closes by suggesting that what is subsumed and feared under
the label of the “populist threat” to democracy in Western Europe today is
less about populism than nationalism and nativism.